Atomised

Atomised, also known as The Elementary Particles (French:Les Particules élémentaires), is a novel by the French author Michel Houellebecq, published in France in 1998. It tells the story of two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, and their mental struggles against their situations in modern society. It was translated into English by Frank Wynne as Atomised in the UK and as The Elementary Particles in the US. It won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for writer and translator.

Plot

Despite the essentially elaborate scope of the plot revealed in the novel's conclusion (i.e. the eventual emergence of cloning as a replacement for the sexual reproduction of the human race), the narrative focuses almost exclusively on the bleak and unrewarding day-to-day lives of the protagonists, two half-brothers who barely know each other.
They seem devoid of love, and in their loveless or soon to be loveless journeys, Bruno becomes a saddened loner, wrecked by his upbringing and failure to individuate, while Michel’s pioneering work in cloning removes love from the process of reproduction. Humans are proved, in the end, to be just particles and just as bodies decay (a theme in the book) they can also be created from particles.

Atomised

Atomised, also known as The Elementary Particles (French:Les Particules élémentaires), is a novel by the French author Michel Houellebecq, published in France in 1998. It tells the story of two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, and their mental struggles against their situations in modern society. It was translated into English by Frank Wynne as Atomised in the UK and as The Elementary Particles in the US. It won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for writer and translator.

Plot

Despite the essentially elaborate scope of the plot revealed in the novel's conclusion (i.e. the eventual emergence of cloning as a replacement for the sexual reproduction of the human race), the narrative focuses almost exclusively on the bleak and unrewarding day-to-day lives of the protagonists, two half-brothers who barely know each other.
They seem devoid of love, and in their loveless or soon to be loveless journeys, Bruno becomes a saddened loner, wrecked by his upbringing and failure to individuate, while Michel’s pioneering work in cloning removes love from the process of reproduction. Humans are proved, in the end, to be just particles and just as bodies decay (a theme in the book) they can also be created from particles.

He is not a lyrical writer or a storyteller ... In 2008, at the age of 83, she published a bitter, vitriolic memoir, L’Innocente (‘The InnocentWoman’), which appears consistent with Houellebecq’s fictionalised portrait of her in his 1998 novel Lesparticulesélémentaires (‘The Elementary Particles’) as a high-strung, self-indulgent narcissist ... P ... P ... P ... ....